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NASA's Juno spacecraft made its closest flyby yet of Io, one of Jupiter's largest moons, sending back images of "sharp cliffs, edgy mountain peaks, lakes of pooled lava and even a volcanic plume," reports the New York Times. From the report: The Juno spacecraft, designed to study the origin and evolution of Jupiter, arrived at the planet in 2016. NASA extended the mission in 2021, and the orbiter has since captured photos of the Jovian moons Ganymede, Europa and most recently Io. [...] Juno conducted a number of more distant observations of Io in recent years. Its latest flyby occurred on Dec. 30, when the spacecraft came within 932 miles of the moon. The images captured during this visit were made with an instrument called JunoCam and are in visible wavelengths. They are some of the highest resolution views of Io's global structure. The mission's managers shared six images of Io on the mission's website, and members of the public have since uploaded digitally enhanced versions that highlight features on Io's surface. Mission scientists are already at work analyzing these images, searching for differences across Io's surface to learn how often its volcanoes erupt, how bright and hot those eruptions are and how the resulting lava flows. According to Dr. Bolton, the team will also compare Juno's images to older views of the Jovian moon to determine what has changed on Io over a variety of encounters. And they'll get a second set of data to work with in a month, when Juno completes another close flyby of the explosive world on Feb. 3.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Programmer James Lambert has been working on a demake of Valve's Portal puzzle game for the Nintendo N64. After several years of development, Portal 64: The First Slice is now out of beta with two-thirds of the game's test chambers available to play. PC Gamer reports: In the announcement video Lambert goes through some of the new features in the latest build, including a seriously impressive visual rework on the portal gun itself. The video also showcases just how much of Portal's feel this manages to successfully capture, in particular the mind-bending effects of observing rooms and Chell through the portals themselves. I once called this the most impressive homebrew game I've ever seen and, while admittedly the N64 nostalgia helps, I'd stick by that. While this is obviously the first slice (geddit) and there's more to come, it's an incredible achievement in its own right: The first 13 test chambers of the game all present-and-correct. Portal has 19 test chambers, and Portal: Still Alive (which unbelievably has never seen an official PC release) added a further 14, so Lambert's well on his way to completing a vanilla version of Portal 64. You can follow the Portal 64 project on YouTube and download the game here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Marking a significant advancement in medical science, the world's first partial heart transplant has achieved the expected outcome after over a year of research efforts. Carried out by Duke Health, the patient, a young individual, now exhibits functioning valves and arteries that are growing in tandem with the transplant, as initially expected by the medical team. In spring 2022, doctors carried out the procedure on a baby who needed a new heart valve. Before, they used non-living valves, which didn't grow with the child. This meant the child needed frequent replacements, and the surgeries had a 50 percent chance of being deadly. The new procedure avoids these problems, according to the team. Babies with serious heart valve problems face a tough challenge because there aren't any implants that can grow with them. So, these babies end up needing new implants over and over until they're big enough for an adult-sized valve. It's a problem that doesn't have a solution yet. Duke Health doctors, leading a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, discovered that the innovative valve collection method used in the partial heart transplant resulted in two properly functioning valves and arteries that are growing along with the child, resembling natural blood vessels. "This publication is proof that this technology works, this idea works, and can be used to help other children," said Joseph W. Turek, first author of the study and Duke's chief of pediatric cardiac surgery, in a statement. The research also notes that the new procedure requires less immunosuppressant medication, reducing potential long-term side effects. It also facilitates a "domino transplant" method, where one donor heart benefits multiple patients, potentially doubling the number of hearts available for children with heart disease by utilizing previously unused hearts and valves.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Generative AI models like Google Bard and GitHub Copilot are increasingly being used in various industries, but users often overlook their limitations, leading to serious errors and inefficiencies. Daniel Stenberg of curl and libcurl highlights a specific problem of AI-generated security reports: when reports are made to look better and to appear to have a point, it takes a longer time to research and eventually discard it. "Every security report has to have a human spend time to look at it and assess what it means," adds Stenberg. "The better the crap, the longer time and the more energy we have to spend on the report until we close it." The Register reports: The curl project offers a bug bounty to security researchers who find and report legitimate vulnerabilities. According to Stenberg, the program has paid out over $70,000 in rewards to date. Of 415 vulnerability reports received, 64 have been confirmed as security flaws and 77 have been deemed informative -- bugs without obvious security implications. So about 66 percent of the reports have been invalid. The issue for Stenberg is that these reports still need to be investigated and that takes developer time. And while those submitting bug reports have begun using AI tools to accelerate the process of finding supposed bugs and writing up reports, those reviewing bug reports still rely on human review. The result of this asymmetry is more plausible-sounding reports, because chatbot models can produce detailed, readable text without regard to accuracy. As Stenberg puts it, AI produces better crap. "A crap report does not help the project at all. It instead takes away developer time and energy from something productive. Partly because security work is considered one of the most important areas so it tends to trump almost everything else." As examples, he cites two reports submitted to HackerOne, a vulnerability reporting community. One claimed to describe Curl CVE-2023-38545 prior to actual disclosure. But Stenberg had to post to the forum to make clear that the bug report was bogus. He said that the report, produced with the help of Google Bard, "reeks of typical AI style hallucinations: it mixes and matches facts and details from old security issues, creating and making up something new that has no connection with reality." [...] Stenberg readily acknowledges that AI assistance can be genuinely helpful. But he argues that having a human in the loop makes the use and outcome of AI tools much better. Even so, he expects the ease and utility of these tools, coupled with the financial incentive of bug bounties, will lead to more shoddy LLM-generated security reports, to the detriment of those on the receiving end.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm today unveiled a new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, a single-chip architecture that will likely power Apple Vision Pro competitors from Meta, Samsung, Google and HTC, among others. ZDNet reports: Succeeding last year's XR2 Gen 2, the plus variant brings improved GPU and CPU frequency -- up 15% and 20% respectively, support for 4.3K per eye resolution at 90fps, and the ability for headsets to field 12 or more cameras with on-device AI capabilities. The latter allows equipped models to better track user movements and surrounding objects for more immersive (and harmonious) VR and MR experiences. As for efficiency gains, you'll still be getting the 50% improvement as the previous XR2 Gen 2 when stacked against the XR2 Gen 1 platform. Basically, there's no change on that front. "(Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2) will take XR productivity and entertainment to the next level by bringing spectacularly clear visuals to use cases such as room-scale screens, life-size overlays and virtual desktops," said Hugo Swart, vice president and general manager of XR, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, in a Thursday press release. Clearly, the new silicon is aimed at headsets that can do it all -- with feature parity to the $3,500 gorilla in the room, Apple's upcoming Vision Pro headset -- though Qualcomm says it'll be priced accessibly for manufacturers to build hardware around. How affordable will these competing wearables be? Your guess is as good as mine. But considering we've already gotten products like the $500 Meta Quest 3 fielding the slightly less capable XR2 Gen 2 chip, the future of XR may not be as expensive as it seems. The new Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset is made in collaboration with Google and Samsung, both of which bring expertise in the Android ecosystem and developing mobile VR devices. The trio had announced plans to develop an XR platform back in February of 2023, likely in reaction to the then-rumored headset by Apple.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to MoffettNathanson, the U.S. pay-TV industry had its worst-ever third quarter after losing about 900,000 subscribers. "That poor result, the research firm added, left the total pay-TV industry shrinking at a record pace of -7.3%, widened from a year-ago decline of -5.9%," reports Light Reading. "It also left pay-TV penetration of occupied households (including vMVPDs) at just 54.8% -- a level last seen in 1989, five years before the debut of DirecTV." From the report: Drilling down on Q3 results, traditional pay-TV providers (cable, telco and satellite) shed 1.97 million subscribers, widened from a loss of 1.94 million in the year-ago quarter. Within that category, US cable lost 1.10 million video subs in Q3, versus a loss of -1.09 million in the year-ago period. Satellite operators (Dish Network and DirecTV) lost 667,000 subs in Q3, versus -567,000 in the year-ago quarter. Telco TV providers lost 198,000 video subs in the period, an improvement when compared to a year-ago loss of -250,000 subs. vMVPDs, meanwhile, added 1.08 million in Q3, down from a year-ago gain of about 1.34 million. Despite those gains, vMVPDs recaptured only 21.7% of traditional pay-TV's subscriber losses in the period, according to MoffettNathanson. Meanwhile, YouTube TV continues to dominate the vMVPD category. MoffettNathanson estimates that YouTube TV added about 350,000 subs in Q3, extending its total to 7 million -- representing 40% of the vMVPD sector's 18 million subscriber total. "Based on our Q3 estimate, YouTube TV has now surpassed Dish Network [6.72 million satellite TV subs at the end of Q3] to become the country's fourth largest MVPD of any kind," Moffett noted. "At the current trajectory, YouTube TV should pass DirecTV for third place in less than a year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: ChatGPT is still no House, MD. While the chatty AI bot has previously underwhelmed with its attempts to diagnose challenging medical cases -- with an accuracy rate of 39 percent in an analysis last year -- a study out this week in JAMA Pediatrics suggests the fourth version of the large language model is especially bad with kids. It had an accuracy rate of just 17 percent when diagnosing pediatric medical cases. The low success rate suggests human pediatricians won't be out of jobs any time soon, in case that was a concern. As the authors put it: "[T]his study underscores the invaluable role that clinical experience holds." But it also identifies the critical weaknesses that led to ChatGPT's high error rate and ways to transform it into a useful tool in clinical care. With so much interest and experimentation with AI chatbots, many pediatricians and other doctors see their integration into clinical care as inevitable. [...] For ChatGPT's test, the researchers pasted the relevant text of the medical cases into the prompt, and then two qualified physician-researchers scored the AI-generated answers as correct, incorrect, or "did not fully capture the diagnosis." In the latter case, ChatGPT came up with a clinically related condition that was too broad or unspecific to be considered the correct diagnosis. For instance, ChatGPT diagnosed one child's case as caused by a branchial cleft cyst -- a lump in the neck or below the collarbone -- when the correct diagnosis was Branchio-oto-renal syndrome, a genetic condition that causes the abnormal development of tissue in the neck, and malformations in the ears and kidneys. One of the signs of the condition is the formation of branchial cleft cysts. Overall, ChatGPT got the right answer in just 17 of the 100 cases. It was plainly wrong in 72 cases, and did not fully capture the diagnosis of the remaining 11 cases. Among the 83 wrong diagnoses, 47 (57 percent) were in the same organ system. Among the failures, researchers noted that ChatGPT appeared to struggle with spotting known relationships between conditions that an experienced physician would hopefully pick up on. For example, it didn't make the connection between autism and scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency) in one medical case. Neuropsychiatric conditions, such as autism, can lead to restricted diets, and that in turn can lead to vitamin deficiencies. As such, neuropsychiatric conditions are notable risk factors for the development of vitamin deficiencies in kids living in high-income countries, and clinicians should be on the lookout for them. ChatGPT, meanwhile, came up with the diagnosis of a rare autoimmune condition. Though the chatbot struggled in this test, the researchers suggest it could improve by being specifically and selectively trained on accurate and trustworthy medical literature -- not stuff on the Internet, which can include inaccurate information and misinformation. They also suggest chatbots could improve with more real-time access to medical data, allowing the models to refine their accuracy, described as "tuning."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As spotted by X user bedros_p, Google appears to be preparing to introduce a paid upgrade for Bard Advanced, a "new, cutting-edge AI experience" announced in December that gives users access to Google's best models and capabilities. Android Police reports: According to the strings, you will be able to "Try Bard Advanced for 3 months, on us." After that test period, you will likely have to pay up for the service. A defunct link within the code suggests that it may be part of Google One, but it's not clear if Bard Advanced will be added to all tiers or only more expensive ones with more Google Drive storage. It's also possible that it will be an extra new tier in Google One. As a refresher, Google launched its most capable AI model yet in December 2023, called Gemini. The LLM is available in three tiers, including a Nano version capable of running on devices like phones and a Pro version currently powering Bard in the US. There is also a Gemini Ultra which isn't public just yet, but supposedly outperforms other LLMs in almost all metrics. Google says that this is the one that will power Bard Advanced.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: AMD engineers are proposing an FPGA Subsystem User-Space Interface to overcome current limitations of the Linux kernel's FPGA manager subsystem. AMD-Xilinx engineers are proposing a new sysfs interface for the FPGA subsystem that allows for more user-space control over FPGAs. The suggested interface would handle FPGA configuration, driver probe/remove, bridges, Device Tree Overlay file support for re-programming an FPGA while the operating system is running, and other capabilities for user-space not currently presented by the mainline kernel. [...] This proposal from AMD hopes to standardize the FPGA subsystem user-space interface in a manner that is suitable for upstreaming into the mainline Linux kernel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Los Angeles Times: The former Westside Pavilion, a long shuttered indoor mall, will be transformed into a UCLA biomedical research center aimed at tackling such towering challenges as curing cancer and preventing global pandemics, officials announced Wednesday. The sprawling three-story structure will be known as the UCLA Research Park and will house two multidisciplinary centers focusing on immunology and immunotherapy as well as quantum science and engineering. Establishment of the public-private research center is a coup for Southern California that "will cement California's global, economic, scientific and technical dominance into the 22nd century and beyond," said Gov. Gavin Newsom. The former owners of the mall, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. and Macerich, said Wednesday that they sold the property to the Regents of the University of California for $700 million. By purchasing the former shopping center, UCLA saved several years of potential toil to build such a facility on campus. UCLA is the most-applied-to university in the nation, but its Westwood home is among the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses, leaving it limited room for growth. The former mall sits on prime real estate in the heart of the Westside at Pico Boulevard and Overland Avenue, about two miles from the UCLA campus. The mall was owned by commercial developers who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to dramatically remake the old shopping center into an office complex intended to appeal to technology firms, which signed some of the biggest office leases in L.A.'s Silicon Beach before the pandemic. Google agreed to become the sole tenant and began paying rent last year yet never moved in. The interior is mostly unfinished, but is ready for UCLA to build out to its specifications in a process Newsom said would take about 40 months. The UCLA Research Park "will serve as a state of the art hub of research and innovation that will bring together academics, corporate partners, government agencies and startups to explore new areas of inquiry and achieve breakthroughs that serve the common good," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said. In addition to flexible work areas, the former mall's 12-screen multiplex movie theater may be converted into lecture halls or performance spaces offering programming across the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, the chancellor's office said. One tenant of the research park will be the new California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The research publisher Science announced today that all of its journals will begin using commercial software that automates the process of detecting improperly manipulated images. From a report: The move comes many years into our awareness that the transition to digital data and publishing has made it comically easy to commit research fraud by altering images. While the move is a significant first step, it's important to recognize the software's limitations. While it will catch some of the most egregious cases of image manipulation, enterprising fraudsters can easily avoid being caught if they know how the software operates. Which, unfortunately, we feel compelled to describe (and, to be fair, the company that has developed the software does so on its website). Much of the image-based fraud we've seen arises from a dilemma faced by many scientists: It's not a problem to run experiments, but the data they generate often isn't the data you want. Maybe only the controls work, or maybe the experiments produce data that is indistinguishable from controls. For the unethical, this doesn't pose a problem since nobody other than you knows what images come from which samples. It's relatively simple to present images of real data as something they're not. To make this concrete, we can look at data from a procedure called a western blot, which uses antibodies to identify specific proteins from a complex mixture that has been separated according to protein size. Typical western blot data looks like the image at right, with the darkness of the bands representing proteins that are present at different levels in different conditions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Both of Microsoft's current Xbox consoles now have kitchen appliance counterparts. The Xbox Series S toaster recently debuted, following up the Xbox Series X refrigerator. It's available for purchase from Walmart for $39.99. In place of its ability to connect to a TV and play games, it can toast bread or bagels, imprinting the Xbox logo onto its side with its internal heat coils. The Series S toaster has a slot long enough to fit two slices of bread side by side, which I suppose can be considered multiplayer support if the bread is for two people. As with most toasters, this one has different toast browning levels, a removeable crumb tray, a bread ejection function, and automatic shutoff.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An international law firm that works with companies affected by security incidents has experienced its own cyberattack that exposed the sensitive health information of hundreds of thousands of data breach victims. From a report: San Francisco-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe said last week that hackers stole the personal information and sensitive health data of more than 637,000 data breach victims from a file share on its network during an intrusion in March 2023. Orrick works with companies that are hit by security incidents, including data breaches, to handle regulatory requirements, such as obtaining victims' information in order to notify state authorities and the individuals affected. In a series of data breach notification letters sent to affected individuals, Orrick said the hackers stole reams of data from its systems that pertain to security incidents at other companies, during which Orrick served as legal counsel.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A consumer action group is accusing Starbucks of exploiting customers via its gift card and app payments, forcing them to enter a spending cycle where they will never be able to fully spend the remaining balance of prepaid amounts. From a report: The Washington Consumer Protection Coalition, a self-described "movement of everyday consumers advocating for corporate accountability," is calling on the state attorney general to investigate whether the company's policies violate consumer protection laws. "Starbucks rigs its payment platform so consumers are encouraged to leave unspent money on their cards and apps," said Chris Carter, campaign manager for the group, in a statement. "A few dollars here and there left on a payment platform may not sound like a lot but it adds up. Over the last five years Starbucks has claimed nearly $900 million in unspent gift card and app money as corporate revenue, boosting corporate profits and inflating executive bonuses." [...] The group, in a 15-page complaint, alleges the platforms for Starbucks' mobile app and digital payment cards are akin to an "involuntary subscription." Customers can only reload money in $5 increments, with a $10 minimum purchase. That, the group says, prevents customers from ever reaching a zero balance, meaning Starbucks pockets more of the customer's money. The Coalition does concede that customers can reload their accounts in stores for a custom amount of $5 or more, making it easier to hit a zero balance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All new cars and vans bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035, according to the latest legal mandate updated this week. From a report: The date for all new petrol and diesel cars to be banned was originally set for 2030. However, in September, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pushed this date back to 2035. The government says this is giving consumers more time to make the switch and deal with the UK's charging infrastructure. The transition will still be challenging. Eighty percent of new cars and 70 percent of new vans sold in Great Britain must be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100 percent by 2035. While the government points to statistics indicating a 41 percent increase in zero-emission vehicles registered for the first time -- note, the vast majority of newly registered vehicles still remain conventionally powered -- charging infrastructure is an altogether different story. The government boasts of more than 50,000 public charge points, an increase of 44 percent year on year, but not all chargers are born equal. According to research from RAC, a local roadside assistance business, the government has failed to meet its target of having six or more rapid or ultra-rapid electric vehicle chargers at every motorway service area in England.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI plans to launch the GPT Store, its app store for AI, next week, the company informed customers Thursday. The company -- which initially planned to launch the app store late last year but delayed amid the corporate drama -- didn't share how it plans to split revenue with developers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany's emissions hit a 70-year low last year as Europe's largest economy reduced its reliance on coal. From a report: A study by the thinktank Agora Energiewende found that Germany emitted 673m tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2023, 73m tonnes fewer than in 2022. The drop was "largely attributable to a strong decrease in coal power generation," Agora said, accounting for a reduction of 46m tonnes in CO2 emissions. Emissions from industry fell significantly, largely due to a decline in production by energy-intensive companies. Electricity generation from renewable sources was more than 50% of the total in 2023 for the first time, while coal's share dropped to 26% from 34%, according to the federal network agency. Germany had resorted to coal following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Moscow cut off gas supplies. But since then Germany has significantly reduced its use of the fossil fuels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG says it developed a 27-inch OLED gaming monitor that can reach an incredibly high 480Hz refresh rate, promising to usher in an "era of OLEDs featuring ultra-high refresh rates," LG says. From a report: LG says it achieved the 480Hz rate on a QHD 2,560-by-1,440-resolution display. Other vendors, including Alienware and Asus, have also introduced PC monitors that can hit 500Hz. But they did so using IPS or TN panels at a lower 1920-by-1080 resolution. OLED panels, on the other hand, are known for offering stunning color contrasts, and true blacks, resulting in top-notch picture quality. The 480Hz refresh rate will be overkill for the average gamer. But the ultra-high refresh rate could appeal to competitive players, where latency and smooth gameplay matters. LG adds that the 27-inch OLED monitor features a 0.03-millisecond response time. The OLED panel should also be easier on the eyes during long playthroughs. "The company's Gaming OLEDs emit the lowest level of blue light in the industry and approximately half the amount emitted by premium LCDs," LG says. "This reduction in blue light not only minimizes eye fatigue but also eliminates flickers, providing gamers with more comfortable and enjoyable gaming sessions."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several prominent museums have been unable to display their collections online since a cyberattack hit a prominent technological service provider that helps hundreds of cultural organizations show their works digitally and manage internal documents. From a report: The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas were among the institutions confirming that their systems have experienced outages in recent days. The service provider, Gallery Systems, said in a recent message to clients, which was obtained by The New York Times, that it had noticed a problem on Dec. 28, when computers running its software became encrypted and could no longer operate. "We immediately took steps to isolate those systems and implemented measures to prevent additional systems from being affected, including taking systems offline as a precaution," the company said in the message. "We also launched an investigation and third-party cybersecurity experts were engaged to assist. In addition, we notified law enforcement." Signs of disruption were evident on several museum websites because eMuseum, a tool that usually lets visitors search online collections, was down. There was also disruption behind the scenes: Some curators said that they had returned from their winter vacations to find themselves unable to access sensitive information from another Gallery Systems program called TMS. That system can include the names of donors, loan agreements, provenance records, shipping information and storage locations of priceless artworks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perplexity, a startup going after Google's dominant position in web search, has won backing from Jeff Bezos and venture capitalists betting that artificial intelligence will upend the way people find information online. From a report: Started less than two years ago, Perplexity has fewer than 40 employees and is based out of a San Francisco co-working space. The company's product, which it calls an answer engine, is used by about 10 million people monthly. Those ingredients were enough to persuade Institutional Venture Partners, Bezos and other tech executives to invest $74 million in the company, the largest sum raised by an internet search startup in recent years. The investment valued Perplexity at $520 million, including the new money, said Chief Executive Officer Aravind Srinivas. Amazon.com, the e-commerce company chaired by Bezos, has committed to investing billions in Anthropic, the AI startup behind the chatbot Claude. The path to competing with Google is littered with carcasses, and Microsoft itself has struggled for years to dislodge the company's roughly 90% market share in online search. Others, including tech giants, are incorporating AI into their search engines. Perplexity's founders said their advantage is using advances in AI to provide direct answers, instead of website links, in response to search queries, without some of the limitations felt by larger companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a report: According to Statcounter, which should be taken with a pinch of salt of course like any sampling, the Linux share on the desktop hit nearly 4% in December 2023. Last month was a record too and a clear trend over time, as going back a couple of years, it was rarely coming close to 2% but now it's repeatedly nearing 4% so it's quite a good sign overall. The latest from Statcounter shows for all of 2023 below: January - 2.91%February - 2.94%March - 2.85%April - 2.83%May - 2.7%June - 3.07%July - 3.12%August - 3.18%September - 3.02%October - 2.92%November - 3.22%December - 3.82% Looking at December it shows Windows rising too, with macOS dropping down. If we actually take ChromeOS directly into the Linux numbers for December 2023 the overall number would actually be 6.24% (ChromeOS is Linux after all).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is adding a dedicated "Copilot" key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows layout for the first time since 1994. The key will open its AI assistant Copilot on Windows 10 and 11. On Copilot-enabled PCs, users can already invoke Copilot by pressing Windows+C. On other PCs, the key will open Search instead. ArsTechnica adds: A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard. We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn't mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards "over time." Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bestselling personal finance author and entrepreneur admits that he has more than $1 billion in debt -- and he doesn't think that's a bad thing. From a report: "If I go bust, the bank goes bust," said "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" author Robert Kiyosaki in a Nov. 30 Instagram reel. "Not my problem." That's because his debt has been used to purchase assets, he said in the video. He compared that with using debt to purchase liabilities, such as his Ferrari or Rolls-Royce vehicles -- expenses he's paid off in full, he said. "I'm a billion dollars in debt because debt is money," Kiyosaki said during an interview on the "Disruptors" podcast. It connects to his strategy of using cash earnings to purchase precious metals like gold or silver, which Kiyosaki argues will retain their value while the U.S. dollar fluctuates: "toilet paper," he called it. Kiyosaki is one of the country's most well-known personal finance personalities. His 1997 book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," which was originally self-published, has sold more than 40 million copies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX launched a total of 21 satellites on Tuesday night, including "the first six Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capabilities that enable mobile network operators around the world to provide seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters without changing hardware or firmware. The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner," the company said. Ars Technica reports: Besides T-Mobile in the US, several carriers in other countries have signed up to use the direct-to-cell satellites. SpaceX said the other carriers are Rogers in Canada, KDDI in Japan, Optus in Australia, One NZ in New Zealand, Salt in Switzerland, and Entel in Chile and Peru. While SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote that the satellites will "allow for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth," he also described a significant bandwidth limit. "Note, this only supports ~7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while this is a great solution for locations with no cellular connectivity, it is not meaningfully competitive with existing terrestrial cellular networks," Musk wrote. Starlink's direct-to-cell website says the service will provide text messaging only when it becomes available in 2024, with voice and data service beginning sometime in 2025. Starlink's low Earth orbit satellites will work with standard LTE phones, unlike earlier services that required phones specifically built for satellite use. SpaceX's direct-to-cell satellites will also connect with Internet of Things (IoT) devices in 2025, the company says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from The Guardian: Scientists have discovered an entirely new class of antibiotic that appears to kill one of three bacteria considered to pose the greatest threat to human health because of their extensive drug-resistance. Zosurabalpin defeated highly drug-resistant strains of Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Crab) in mouse models of pneumonia and sepsis, and was being tested in human trials. Crab is classified as a priority 1 critical pathogen by the World Health Organization, alongside two other drug-resistant forms of bacteria -- Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae. Antibiotic-resistant infections pose an urgent threat to human health -- particularly those caused by a large group of bacteria known as Gram-negative bacteria, which are protected by an outer shell containing a substance called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "LPS allows bacteria to live in harsh environments, and it also allows them to evade attack by our immune system," said Dr Michael Lobritz, the global head of infectious diseases at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development in Basel Switzerland, which developed the new drug. No new antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria have been approved in more than 50 years. Roche had previously identified Zosurabalpin as capable of blocking the growth of A baumannii but it was not clear how it worked, or if it would be effective in animals with Crab-related infections. Through a series of experiments published in Nature, Prof Daniel Kahne at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, and colleagues showed that the drug prevented LPS from being transported to the outer membrane of the bacterium, killing it. They also found that Zosurabalpin considerably reduced levels of bacteria in mice with Crab-induced pneumonia and prevented the death of those with Crab-related sepsis. While [Lobritz] stressed that this molecule alone would not solve the public health threat of antimicrobial resistant infections, the discovery could lay the foundations for future efforts to drug the same transport system in other bacteria.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Technology Networks: At about the size of a pinkie nail, the jellyfish species Cladonema can regenerate an amputated tentacle in two to three days -- but how? Regenerating functional tissue across species, including salamanders and insects, relies on the ability to form a blastema, a clump of undifferentiated cells that can repair damage and grow into the missing appendage. Jellyfish, along with other cnidarians such as corals and sea anemones, exhibit high regeneration abilities, but how they form the critical blastema has remained a mystery until now. A research team based in Japan has revealed that stem-like proliferative cells -- which are actively growing and dividing but not yet differentiating into specific cell types -- appear at the site of injury and help form the blastema. "Importantly, these stem-like proliferative cells in blastema are different from the resident stem cells localized in the tentacle," said corresponding author Yuichiro Nakajima, lecturer in the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo. "Repair-specific proliferative cells mainly contribute to the epithelium -- the thin outer layer -- of the newly formed tentacle." The resident stem cells that exist in and near the tentacle are responsible for generating all cellular lineages during homeostasis and regeneration, meaning they maintain and repair whatever cells are needed during the jellyfish's lifetime, according to Nakajima. Repair-specific proliferative cells only appear at the time of injury. "Together, resident stem cells and repair-specific proliferative cells allow rapid regeneration of the functional tentacle within a few days," Nakajima said, noting that jellyfish use their tentacles to hunt and feed. [...] The cellular origins of the repair-specific proliferative cells observed in the blastema remain unclear, though, and the researchers say the currently available tools to investigate the origins are too limited to elucidate the source of those cells or to identify other, different stem-like cells. "It would be essential to introduce genetic tools that allow the tracing of specific cell lineages and the manipulation in Cladonema," Nakajima said. "Ultimately, understanding blastema formation mechanisms in regenerative animals, including jellyfish, may help us identify cellular and molecular components that improve our own regenerative abilities." The findings were published in the journal PLOS Biology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from ScienceAlert: According to a new study [published in Nature Human Behavior], the human brain has two separate ways of processing numbers of things: one system for quantities of four or fewer, and another system for five and up. Presented with four or fewer objects, humans can usually identify the sum at first glance, without counting. And we're almost always right. This ability is known as "subitizing," a term coined by psychologists last century, and it's different from both counting and estimating. It refers to an uncanny sense of immediately knowing how many things you're looking at, with no tallying or guessing required. While we can easily subitize quantities up to four, however, the ability disappears when we're looking at five or more things. If asked to instantly quantify a group of seven apples, for example, we tend to hesitate and estimate, taking slightly longer to respond and still providing less precise answers. Since our subitizing skills vanish so abruptly for quantities larger than four, some researchers have suspected our brains use two distinct processing methods, specialized for either small or large quantities. "However, this idea has been disputed up to now," says co-author Florian Mormann, a cognitive neurophysiologist from the Department of Epileptology at the University Hospital Bonn. "It could also be that our brain always makes an estimate but the error rates for smaller numbers of things are so low that they simply go unnoticed." Previous research involving some of the new study's authors showed that human brains have neurons responsible for each number, with certain nerve cells firing selectively in response to certain quantities. Some neurons fire mainly when a person sees two of something, they found, while others show a similar affinity for their own number of visual elements. Yet many of these neurons also fire in response to slightly smaller or larger numbers, the researchers note, with a weaker reaction for quantities further removed from their numerical focus. "A brain cell for a number of 'seven' elements thus also fires for six and eight elements but more weakly," says neurobiologist Andreas Nieder from the University of Tubingen. "The same cell is still activated but even less so for five or nine elements." This kind of "numerical distance effect" also occurs in monkeys, as Nieder has shown in previous research. Among humans, however, it typically happens only when we see five or more things, hinting at some undiscovered difference in the way we identify smaller numbers. "There seems to be an additional mechanism for numbers of around less than five elements that makes these neurons more precise," Nieder says. Neurons responsible for lower numbers are able to inhibit other neurons responsible for adjacent numbers, the study's authors report, thus limiting any mixed signals about the quantity in question. When a trio-specializing neuron fires, for example, it also inhibits the neurons that typically fire in response to groups of two or four things. Neurons for the number five and beyond apparently lack this mechanism.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter axlash writes: It has been reported on X that Niklaus Wirth, inventor and co-inventor of several languages including Pascal, Euler and Oberon, died on Jan 1, 2024. He was aged 89. "We lost a titan of programming languages, programming methodology, software engineering and hardware design," writes software engineer Bertrand Meyer in a post on X. "Niklaus Wirth passed away on the first of January. We mourn a pioneer, colleague, mentor and friend." Niklaus Wirth, born on February 15, 1934, in Switzerland, is a renowned computer scientist known for his significant contributions to the field of computer science and software engineering. He is best known for developing several programming languages, including ALGOL W, Pascal, and Modula-2, which have had a profound impact on the design and development of modern computer software. Wirth's work emphasized simplicity, clarity, and efficiency in programming languages, which greatly influenced subsequent language design and the development of structured programming techniques. His legacy also includes the development of the Oberon programming language and the design of the Oberon operating system. Wirth's dedication to elegant and efficient software design continues to inspire computer scientists and software engineers worldwide, making him a highly respected figure in the history of computing. You can learn more about Wirth via A.M. Turing Award, Britannica, and the Computer History Museum.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alex Hern reports via the Guardian: The email newsletter service Substack is facing a user revolt after its chief executive defended hosting and handling payments for "Nazis" on its platform, citing anti-censorship reasons. In a note on the site published in December, the chief executive, Hamish McKenzie, said the firm "doesn't like Nazis," and wished "no one held these views." But he said the company did not think that censorship -- by demonetising sites that publish extreme views -- was a solution to the problem, and instead made it worse. Some of the largest newsletters on the service have threatened to take their business elsewhere if Substack does not reverse its stance. On Tuesday Casey Newton, who writes Platformer -- a popular tech newsletter on the platform with thousands of subscribers paying at least $10 a month -- became the most prominent yet. [...] Substack takes a 10% cut of subscriptions from paid newsletters, meaning the loss of Platformer alone could represent six figures of revenue. Other newsletters have already made the jump. Talia Lavin, a journalist with thousands of paid subscribers on her newsletter The Sword and the Sandwich, moved to a competing service, Buttondown, on Tuesday. Substack's leadership team said in a statement: "As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Honda and Mitsubishi are collaborating in a two-year project in Shunan City, Japan, to evaluate the feasibility and environmental benefits of powering a data center with fuel cells taken from electric vehicles. The Register reports: Hydrogen for the fuel cell power station will be provided by a third Japanese company, Tokuyama Corporation, as a byproduct from its salt water electrolysis business, which manufactures about 50,000 tons of sodium hypochlorite each year. The project was proposed by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), which promotes the research, development and adoption of industrial, energy and environmental technologies. The objective is to consider ways of reducing costs for organizations to install and operate stationary fuel cell systems, which could ultimately contribute to the decarbonization of the electric power supply. No details were disclosed of the kind of datacenter infrastructure that Mitsubishi will operate as part of this project, so it is unknown how much power the fuel cell power station will be required to supply. [...] Hydrogen can be considered a clean fuel because it produces only water as a byproduct when consumed in a fuel cell. But the problem is in sourcing the hydrogen. Much commercially produced hydrogen is extracted from methane gas via an energy-intensive process typically powered by fossil fuels. It is likely that the process Tokuyama uses in its salt water electrolysis is ultimately powered by fossil fuels, but the hydrogen is produced as a byproduct and this is currently just a demonstration project to evaluate the feasibility of integrated hydrogen business models. In addition to verifying the use of fuel cells for primary and backup power sources in datacenters, the project will also look at the potential for grid-balancing applications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A chief executive officer whose claimed qualifications appear to have no basis in fact was used to promote the HyperVerse crypto fund, alongside celebrity messages of support, as part of a push to recruit new investors into the scheme. A Guardian Australia investigation last month revealed thousands of people have lost millions of dollars to the HyperVerse crypto scheme, which was promoted by the Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner, Ryan Xu, two of the founders of the collapsed Australian bitcoin company Blockchain Global. Blockchain Global owes creditors $58 million and its liquidator has referred Xu and Lee to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for alleged possible breaches of the Corporations Act. Asic has said it does not intend to take action at this time. The HyperVerse investment scheme is among those that appear to have escaped scrutiny in Australia despite being flagged by regulators overseas, by one as a possible "scam" and another as a "suspected pyramid scheme." Lee has denied HyperVerse was a scam and disputes being its founder. A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of HyperVerse at an online global launch event in December 2021, with video messages of support from a clutch of celebrities released on Twitter the following month, including from the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Chuck Norris. Promotional material released for HyperVerse, which was linked to a previous scheme called HyperFund, said Reece Lewis was a graduate of the University of Leeds and held a master's degree from the University of Cambridge. A brief career summary of Reece Lewis, which was presented in a video launch for potential investors, said he had worked for Goldman Sachs, sold a web development company to Adobe and launched an IT start-up firm, before being recruited to head up HyperVerse by the HyperTech group. This was the umbrella organization for a range of Hyper-branded crypto schemes. Lee spoke at the launch event as "chairman" of the HyperTech group, while Xu was introduced as the group's "founder." The company praised Reece Lewis's "strong performance and drive," citing his credentials as the reason for his recruitment. Guardian Australia has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge has any record of someone by the name Steven Reece Lewis on their databases. No records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Adobe, a publicly listed company since 1986, has no record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public SEC filings. It is understood that Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company. Guardian Australia was unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Reece Lewis or any internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material. A Twitter account in Reece Lewis's name was set up a month before he appeared in the HyperVerse video launch and was used to promote the scheme on the platform for just six months before the account became inactive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alexander Martin reports via The Record: The owner of an apartment in Veliky Novgorod in Russia has been arrested for discrediting the country's armed forces after a neighbor alerted the police to the message 'Slava Ukraini' scrolling across their LED curtains. When police went to the scene, they saw the garland which the owner had hung in celebration of the New Year and a "slogan glorifying the Armed Forces of Ukraine," as a spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs told state-owned news agency TASS. The apartment owner said the garland was supposed to display a "Happy New Year" greeting, TASS reported. Several other people in Russia described a similar experience on the AlexGyver web forum, linked to a DIY blog popular in the country. They said at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, their LED curtains also began to show the "Glory to Ukraine" message in Ukrainian. It is not clear whether any of these other posters were also arrested. The man in Veliky Novgorod will have to defend his case in court, according to TASS. Police have seized the curtain itself. An independent investigation into the cause of the message by the AlexGyver forum users found that affected curtains all used the same open-source firmware code. The original code appears to have originated in Ukraine before someone created a fork translated into Russian. According to the Telegram channel for AlexGyver, the code had been added to the original project on October 18, and then in December the people or person running the fork copied and pasted that update into their own version. "Everyone who downloaded and updated the firmware in December received a gift," the Telegram channel wrote. The message was "really encrypted, hidden from the 'reader' of the code, and is displayed on the first day of the year exclusively for residents of Russia by [geographic region]."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal criminal complaint has revealed that state and local agencies in New Jersey bought millions of dollars worth of banned Chinese surveillance cameras. The cameras were purchased from a local company that rebranded the banned equipment made by Dahua Technology, a company that has been implicated in the surveillance of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. According to 404 Media, "At least $15 million of the equipment was bought using federal COVID relief funds." From the report: The feds charged Tamer Zakhary, the CEO of the New Jersey-based surveillance company Packetalk, with three counts of wire fraud and a separate count of false statements for repeatedly lying to state and local agencies about the provenance of his company's surveillance cameras. Some of the cameras Packetalk sold to local agencies were Dahua cameras that had the Dahua logo removed and the colors of the camera changed, according to the criminal complaint. Dahua Technology is the second largest surveillance camera company in the world. In 2019, the U.S. government banned the purchase of Dahua cameras using federal funds because their cameras have "been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in Xingjiang." The FCC later said that Dahua cameras "pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security." Dahua is not named in the federal complaint, but [404 Media's Jason Koebler] was able to cross-reference details in the complaint with Dahua and was able to identify specific cameras sold by Packetalk to Dahua's product. According to the FBI, Zakhary sold millions of dollars of surveillance equipment, including rebranded Dahua cameras, to agencies all over New Jersey despite knowing that the cameras were illegal to sell to public agencies. Zakhary also specifically helped two specific agencies in New Jersey (called "Victim Agency-1" and "Victim Agency-2" in the complaint) justify their purchases using federal COVID relief money from the CARES Act, according to the criminal complaint. The feds allege, essentially, that Zakhary tricked local agencies into buying banned cameras using COVID funds: "Zakhary fraudulently misrepresented to the Public Safety Customers that [Packetalk's] products were compliant with Section 889 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 [which banned Dahua cameras], when, in fact, they were not," the complaint reads. "As a result of Zakhary's fraudulent misrepresentations, the Public Safety Customers purchased at least $35 million in surveillance cameras and equipment from [Packetalk], over $15 million of which was federal funds and grants."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facing more than 30 lawsuits from victims of its massive data breach, 23andMe is now deflecting the blame to the victims themselves in an attempt to absolve itself from any responsibility, according to a letter sent to a group of victims seen by TechCrunch. "Rather than acknowledge its role in this data security disaster, 23andMe has apparently decided to leave its customers out to dry while downplaying the seriousness of these events," Hassan Zavareei, one of the lawyers representing the victims who received the letter from 23andMe, told TechCrunch in an email. In December, 23andMe admitted that hackers had stolen the genetic and ancestry data of 6.9 million users, nearly half of all its customers. The data breach started with hackers accessing only around 14,000 user accounts. The hackers broke into this first set of victims by brute-forcing accounts with passwords that were known to be associated with the targeted customers, a technique known as credential stuffing. From these 14,000 initial victims, however, the hackers were able to then access the personal data of the other 6.9 million million victims because they had opted-in to 23andMe's DNA Relatives feature. This optional feature allows customers to automatically share some of their data with people who are considered their relatives on the platform. In other words, by hacking into only 14,000 customers' accounts, the hackers subsequently scraped personal data of another 6.9 million customers whose accounts were not directly hacked. But in a letter sent to a group of hundreds of 23andMe users who are now suing the company, 23andMe said that "users negligently recycled and failed to update their passwords following these past security incidents, which are unrelated to 23andMe." "Therefore, the incident was not a result of 23andMe's alleged failure to maintain reasonable security measures," the letter reads. [...] 23andMe's lawyers argued that the stolen data cannot be used to inflict monetary damage against the victims. "The information that was potentially accessed cannot be used for any harm. As explained in the October 6, 2023 blog post, the profile information that may have been accessed related to the DNA Relatives feature, which a customer creates and chooses to share with other users on 23andMe's platform. Such information would only be available if plaintiffs affirmatively elected to share this information with other users via the DNA Relatives feature. Additionally, the information that the unauthorized actor potentially obtained about plaintiffs could not have been used to cause pecuniary harm (it did not include their social security number, driver's license number, or any payment or financial information)," the letter read. "This finger pointing is nonsensical," said Zavareei. "23andMe knew or should have known that many consumers use recycled passwords and thus that 23andMe should have implemented some of the many safeguards available to protect against credential stuffing -- especially considering that 23andMe stores personal identifying information, health information, and genetic information on its platform." "The breach impacted millions of consumers whose data was exposed through the DNA Relatives feature on 23andMe's platform, not because they used recycled passwords," added Zavareei. "Of those millions, only a few thousand accounts were compromised due to credential stuffing. 23andMe's attempt to shirk responsibility by blaming its customers does nothing for these millions of consumers whose data was compromised through no fault of their own whatsoever."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

smooth wombat writes: The advent of streaming services heralded a new era of movie watching. No longer tied to an inconvenient time at a theater, movies could now be watched at your convenience any time of the day or night in your own home. However, with that convenience comes a sinister side: those same movies disappearing from streaming services. Once the movie is removed from the streaming service you can't watch it again. As a result, more people, particularly younger people, are buying DVDs, and even records, to preserve their ability to watch and listen to what they want when they want. Before his release of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan encouraged fans to embrace "a version you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come steal it from you". From the BBC article: Other directors have chimed in to sing the praises of physical media. James Cameron told Variety:"The streamers are denying us any access whatsoever to certain films. And I think people are responding with their natural reaction, which is 'I'm going to buy it, and I'm going to watch it any time I want.'" Guillermo del Toro posted on X that "If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love... you are the custodian of those films for generations to come." His tweet prompted people to reply, sharing evidence of their vast DVD collections. [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LastPass notified customers today that they are now required to use complex master passwords with a minimum of 12 characters to increase their accounts' security. From a report: Even though LastPass has repeatedly said that there is a 12-character master password requirement since 2018, users have had the ability to use a weaker one. "Historically, while a 12-character master password has been LastPassa(TM) default setting since 2018, customers still had the ability to forego the recommended default settings and choose to create a master password with fewer characters, if they wished to do so," LastPass said in a new announcement today. LastPass has begun enforcing a 12-character master password requirement since April 2023 for new accounts or password resets, but older accounts could still use passwords with fewer than 12 characters. Starting this month, LastPass is now enforcing the 12-character master password requirement for all accounts. Furthermore, LastPass added that it will also start checking new or updated master passwords against a database of credentials previously leaked on the dark web to ensure that they don't match already compromised accounts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Xerox will lay off 15% of its workforce as the struggling digital printing company moves to cut costs and jump-start growth. From a report: In announcing the cuts, Xerox said Wednesday it is adopting a new operating model and organizational structure aimed at boosting its core print business, while also forming a new business services unit. CEO Steven Bandrowczak said in a statement that the shift will enhance the company's ability to efficiently bring products and services to market, labeling the strategic pivot at Xerox a "reinvention." As of October 2023, Xerox had roughly 20,000 employees, according to the company's website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John Walker, reporting for Kotaku: Steam is by far the most peculiar of online storefronts. Built on top of itself for the last twenty years, Valve's behemothic PC game distributor is a clusterfuck of overlapping design choices, where algorithms rule over coherence, with 2023 seeing over 14,500 games released into the mayhem. Which is too many games. That breaks down to just under 40 a day, although given how people release games, it more accurately breaks down to about 50 every weekday. 50 games a day. On a storefront that goes to some lengths to bury new releases, and even buries pages where you can deliberately list new releases. Compared to 2022, that's an increase of nearly 2,000 games, up almost 5,000 from five years ago. There's no reason to expect that growth to diminish any time soon. It's a volume of games that not only could no individual ever hope to keep up with, but nor could even any gaming site. Not even the biggest sites in the industry could afford an editorial team capable of playing 50 games a day to find and write about those worth highlighting. Realistically, not even a tenth of the games. And that's not least because of those 50 games per day, about 48 of them will be absolute dross. On one level, in this way Steam represents a wonderful democracy for gaming, where any developer willing to stump up the $100 entry fee can release their game on the platform, with barely any restrictions. On another level, however, it's a disaster for about 99 percent of releases, which stand absolutely no chance of garnering any attention, no matter their quality. The solution: human storefront curation, which Valve has never shown any intention of doing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intuit is being questioned by US lawmakers who say federal tax credits the company received could have been better spent to build a free government alternative to Intuit's popular online tax preparation software, TurboTax. From a report: "For years, Intuit's corporate lobbyists have argued that the federal government should not set up a program for Americans to file their taxes online and for free because it would be too costly for taxpayers," the lawmakers, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, wrote in a letter to the company. "Your company's disclosure reveals that Intuit's research tax break from 2022 alone could have been enough to fund a year of a free e-File program for millions of Americans." The lawmakers asked Intuit to provide details on its research expenses dating to 2018. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, were joined on the letter by Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat from California. The Internal Revenue Service, in a report to Congress last year, estimated it would cost $64 million to $249 million annually for the agency to run a free-filing program. In the fiscal year ending in July 2023, Mountain View, California-based Intuit received $106 million in federal research and experimentation credits, which amounted to about 4% of its total R&D expenses, according to a regulatory filing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Montana and North Carolina have joined a growing list of states that now require identification to view porn, or are blocked from viewing it altogether, as new age verification laws went into effect on January 1. From a report: A year ago, Louisiana paved the way for a wave of age verification laws that target porn sites; eight states have since passed copycat age verification laws of their own. Montana's SB 544 and North Carolina's HB 8 are nearly identical to Louisiana's and other states' laws. The laws' text make unsubstantiated claims about the addictive potential of pornography and its apparent harms to viewers' health. North Carolina's law was passed as part of unrelated legislation that adds a computer science course to high school graduation requirements. Rather than try to make its users jump through hoops to view its content, Pornhub's parent company has blocked viewers in Montana and North Carolina altogether, as it has in other states with similar legislation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG touts AI for its 2024 OLED TVs, but don't expect AI assistants onscreen. The Alpha 11 processor in LG's new G4 and M4 series aims to sharpen clarity, color and image quality. The G4 features LG's Micro Lens Array technology for enhanced brightness. The M4 adopts 2023's wireless connectivity to eliminate unsightly cables. The Verge adds: So the AI supposedly now understands creative intent, according to LG, and can adjust your TV's image settings accordingly. Picture purists can always ignore and disable these AI modes, but many people inevitably leave them on -- so if the upgrades are noticeable, they'll be a difference maker for those customers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roku, the maker of TV streaming boxes and software, is debuting its first high-end televisions in a bid to continue sales momentum for the company's devices. From a report: In the spring, Roku will roll out 55-inch, 65-inch and 75-inch Pro Series TVs that will cost consumers as much as $1,500. The new televisions put Roku in competition with Samsung and LG, which offer several models in that price range. It's a step up from the company's current TVs -- the Select and Plus -- which top out at $999. [...] The new TVs include a thinner design with a flat back for mounting on walls, improved picture quality and better audio for cinematic sound, the San Jose, California-based company said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon-owned Wickr is dead, more than a year after reports showed it had become the app of choice for drug traffickers. 404 Media: If you open the encrypted messaging app Wickr Me today, you'll be greeted with a line of red text: "Reconnecting..." Below that, in white text over a black background, the app says "We're having issues connecting to the Wickr Me network. If the problem persists, try restarting your app or contacting support." Closing and reopening the app will not work. There is no point in contacting support either. That's because on December 31, 2023, Wickr Me, the free version of Wickr, was shut down entirely. Wickr Me is no longer available to download on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The app stopped accepting new users more than a year ago. And now, even current users cannot speak to one another. So ends the story of an app that while never reaching the popularity of other encrypted messaging apps like Signal, nor those that later turned on end-to-end encryption for the masses like WhatsApp, nonetheless played an important role in the adoption of and debate around secure communications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A dinosaur fossil listed for sale in London for $20 million embodies one of the most heated debates in paleontology. From a report: When fossil hunters unearthed the remains of a dinosaur from the hills of eastern Montana five years ago, they carried several key characteristics of a Tyrannosaurus rex: a pair of giant legs for walking, a much smaller pair of arms for slashing prey, and a long tail stretching behind it. But unlike a full-grown T. rex, which would be about the size of a city bus, this dinosaur was more like the size of a pickup truck. The specimen, which is now listed for sale for $20 million at an art gallery in London, raises a question that has come to obsess paleontologists: Is it simply a young T. rex who died before reaching maturity, or does it represent a different but related species of dinosaur known as a Nanotyrannus? The dispute has produced reams of scientific research and decades of debate, polarizing paleontologists along the way. Now, with dinosaur fossils increasingly fetching eye-popping prices at auction, the once-esoteric dispute has begun to ripple through auction houses and galleries, where some see the T. rex name as a valuable brand that can more easily command high prices. "It's ultimately a quite in-the-weeds question of the taxonomy and the classification of one very particular type of dinosaur," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. "However, it involves T. rex, and the debate always gets a little bit more ferocious when the king of dinosaurs is involved." On the internet, juvenile T. rex versus Nanotyrannus has become something of a meme, providing fuel for jokes on niche social media channels. ("I won't believe in Nanotyrannus until it shows up at my own door and devours me," a paleontology student with the handle "TheDinoBuff" joked recently on the social media site X.) The gallery selling the specimen discovered in Montana -- which is known as Chomper -- was faced with a choice. Call it a juvenile T. rex? Label it a Nanotyrannus? Or embrace the ambiguity of an unresolved scientific debate? The David Aaron gallery in London went with calling it a "rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton." It cited an influential 2020 paper on the subject led by Holly N. Woodward, which used an analysis of growth rings within bone samples from two disputed specimens -- which are estimated to have been similarly sized to Chomper -- to argue that they were juveniles nearing growth spurts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to new findings from the Millennium Cohort study, almost half of British teenagers say they feel addicted to social media. The Guardian reports: The latest research, by Dr Amy Orben's team at the University of Cambridge, used data from the Millennium Cohort study which is tracking the lives of about 19,000 people born in 2000-2002 across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. When the cohort were aged 16-18 they were asked, for the first time, about social media use. Of the 7,000 people who responded, 48% said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "I think I am addicted to social media." A higher proportion of girls (57%) agreed compared to boys (37%), according to the data shared with the Guardian. Scientists said this did not mean that these people are actually suffering from a clinical addiction, but that expressing a perceived lack of control suggests a problematic relationship. "We're not saying the people who say they feel addicted are addicted," said Georgia Turner, a graduate student leading the analysis. "Self-perceived social media addiction is not [necessarily] the same as drug addiction. But it's not a nice feeling to feel you don't have agency over your own behavior. It's quite striking that so many people feel like that and it can't it be that good." "Social media research has largely assumed that [so-called] social media addiction is going to follow the same framework as drug addiction," said Turner. Orben's team and others argue that this is likely to be oversimplistic and are investigating whether the teenagers cluster into groups whose behavioral can be predicted by other personality traits. It could be that, for some, their relationship is akin to a behavioral addiction, but for others their use could be driven by compulsive checking, others may be relying on it to cope with negative life experiences, and others may simply be responding to negative social perceptions about "wasting time" on social media.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"To prevent disinformation from eroding democratic values worldwide, the U.S. must establish a global watermarking standard for text-based AI-generated content," writes retired U.S. Army Col. Joe Buccino in an opinion piece for The Hill. While President Biden's October executive order requires watermarking of AI-derived video and imagery, it offers no watermarking requirement for text-based content. "Text-based AI represents the greatest danger to election misinformation, as it can respond in real-time, creating the illusion of a real-time social media exchange," writes Buccino. "Chatbots armed with large language models trained with reams of data represent a catastrophic risk to the integrity of elections and democratic norms." Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army colonel who serves as an A.I. research analyst with the U.S. Department of Defense Defense Innovation Board. He served as U.S. Central Command communications director from 2021 until September 2023. Here's an excerpt from his report: Watermarking text-based AI content involves embedding unique, identifiable information -- a digital signature documenting the AI model used and the generation date -- into the metadata generated text to indicate its artificial origin. Detecting this digital signature requires specialized software, which, when integrated into platforms where AI-generated text is common, enables the automatic identification and flagging of such content. This process gets complicated in instances where AI-generated text is manipulated slightly by the user. For example, a high school student may make minor modifications to a homework essay created through Chat-GPT4. These modifications may drop the digital signature from the document. However, that kind of scenario is not of great concern in the most troubling cases, where chatbots are let loose in massive numbers to accomplish their programmed tasks. Disinformation campaigns require such a large volume of them that it is no longer feasible to modify their output once released. The U.S. should create a standard digital signature for text, then partner with the EU and China to lead the world in adopting this standard. Once such a global standard is established, the next step will follow -- social media platforms adopting the metadata recognition software and publicly flagging AI-generated text. Social media giants are sure to respond to international pressure on this issue. The call for a global watermarking standard must navigate diverse international perspectives and regulatory frameworks. A global standard for watermarking AI-generated text ahead of 2024's elections is ambitious -- an undertaking that encompasses diplomatic and legislative complexities as well as technical challenges. A foundational step would involve the U.S. publicly accepting and advocating for a standard of marking and detection. This must be followed by a global campaign to raise awareness about the implications of AI-generated disinformation, involving educational initiatives and collaborations with the giant tech companies and social media platforms. In 2024, generative AI and democratic elections are set to collide. Establishing a global watermarking standard for text-based generative AI content represents a commitment to upholding the integrity of democratic institutions. The U.S. has the opportunity to lead this initiative, setting a precedent for responsible AI use worldwide. The successful implementation of such a standard, coupled with the adoption of detection technologies by social media platforms, would represent a significant stride towards preserving the authenticity and trustworthiness of democratic norms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Microsoft's MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the '80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows throughout the '90s. But the software had humble beginnings, as we've detailed in our history of the IBM PC and elsewhere. It began in mid-1980 as QDOS, or "Quick and Dirty Operating System," the work of developer Tim Paterson at a company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP). It was later renamed 86-DOS, after the Intel 8086 processor, and this was the version that Microsoft licensed and eventually purchased. Last week, Internet Archive user f15sim discovered and uploaded a new-old version of 86-DOS to the Internet Archive. Version 0.1-C of 86-DOS is available for download here and can be run using the SIMH emulator; before this, the earliest extant version of 86-DOS was version 0.34, also uploaded by f15sim. This version of 86-DOS is rudimentary even by the standards of early-'80s-era DOS builds and includes just a handful of utilities, a text-based chess game, and documentation for said chess game. But as early as it is, it remains essentially recognizable as the DOS that would go on to take over the entire PC business. If you're just interested in screenshots, some have been posted by user NTDEV on the site that used to be Twitter. According to the version history available on Wikipedia, this build of 86-DOS would date back to roughly August of 1980, shortly after it lost the "QDOS" moniker. By late 1980, SCP was sharing version 0.3x of the software with Microsoft, and by early 1981, it was being developed as the primary operating system of the then-secret IBM Personal Computer. By the middle of 1981, roughly a year after 86-DOS began life as QDOS, Microsoft had purchased the software outright and renamed it MS-DOS. Microsoft and IBM continued to co-develop MS-DOS for many years; the version IBM licensed and sold on its PCs was called PC DOS, though for most of their history the two products were identical. Microsoft also retained the ability to license the software to other computer manufacturers as MS-DOS, which contributed to the rise of a market of mostly interoperable PC clones. The PC market as we know it today still more or less resembles the PC-compatible market of the mid-to-late 1980s, albeit with dramatically faster and more capable components.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Batty reports via The Guardian: [Andrew Scott], best known as Fleabag's "hot priest," has revealed he halted the renowned soliloquy in Shakespeare's play when an audience member took out a laptop to send emails. The actor decided not to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous theatre etiquette during his run in the 2017 production of Hamlet at London's Almeida theatre, for which he earned an Olivier nomination. Speaking to the Happy Sad Confused film podcast, Scott said there was "no way" he could continue with the speech, and refused to resume until the man put his laptop away. "When I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop -- not his phone, his laptop -- while I was in the middle of 'To be or not to fucking be'" said the actor, who said he thought the offending audience member was sending emails. "I was pausing and [the stage team] were like, 'Get on with it' and I was like, 'There's no way.' I stopped for ages." A woman next to the laptop user appeared to alert him to the situation and he finally stopped. "He had absolutely no doubts," added Scott, who was on the podcast to promote his current film All of Us Strangers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An issue with Sony's projectors caused theater chain Alamo Drafthouse to close theaters entirely on New Year's Eve. "As of New Year's Day, however, most theaters and most showtimes now appear to be available, with a few exceptions," reports The Verge. From the report: It's not clear what happened. As New Year's Day is a holiday, we somewhat understandably haven't yet been able to reach Alamo or Sony spokespeople, and not every theater or every screening was affected. That didn't stop Alamo from blaming its Sony projectors for what at least one theater called a "nationwide" outage, however. "Due to nation-wide technical difficulties with Sony, we aren't able to play any titles today," read part of a taped paper sign hanging inside a Woodbury, Minnesota location. That apparently didn't keep the customer who took a picture of that sign from watching The Apartment at that very same location, though: "When we went to our seats, the wait staff let us know that despite the fact that the previews were playing, we wouldn't know until the movie actually started whether we could see the film or not. If it didn't work, the screen would just turn black. Luckily, the film went through without a hitch." What might have only affected some screenings at some theaters? I've seen speculation on Reddit that it may have something to do with expired digital certificates used to unlock encrypted films, but we haven't heard that from Alamo or Sony. We're looking forward to finding out. Longtime Slashdot reader innocent_white_lamb suggests that "[a] cryptographic key used to master all movies distributed by Deluxe" was the culprit after it expired on December 30. "This means that almost all Hollywood movies will no longer play on many commercial cinema servers. In particular, many showings of Wonka and Aquaman had to be cancelled due to the expired encryption key." From their submitted story: Deluxe and the movie companies have been frantically trying to remaster and send out revised versions of current movies over the past few days. Nobody knows what will happen to older movie titles since everything mastered by Deluxe since 2011 may be affected and may need to be remastered if it is to be shown in movie theaters again. There are at least four separate threads discussing this matter on Film-Tech.com, notes innocent_white_lamb.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

reg writes: Twenty-five years ago today, CmdrTaco innocently posted a story entitled "Collection of Fun Video Clips" in the days of T1 lines and invited anyone with the bandwidth to check it out. Even though the term "Slashdot Effect" had already been coined, this was the first time it took down a site. The site owner got a personal call from their ISP, which was later reported in the comments, where he also noted that he was writing a novella called "She Hates My Futon." Many old timers started reading that, although it's never been finished, despite having a Good Reads page, a Facebook page, and several promises that he'll complete it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.